


The First Week of Spring

by elesssar



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 08:54:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3128609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elesssar/pseuds/elesssar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the first week of spring, Tauriel always picks flowers. This is the first spring, however, in which Kíli has fallen off a mountain - or, as he calls it: 'was coerced by the earth into making a rapid descent'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Week of Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, but it's been sitting in my drafts folder for awhile, so I finally finished it :)

Tauriel always picks flowers in the first week of spring. Kíli sits on the edge of the mountain, in a comfortable nook with one leg propped up to keep his balance. He alternates between a long-winded and incredibly boring dossier thrown at him by his brother earlier that morning, and watching Tauriel. She’s wearing no armour today (although no one would ever believe that she isn’t armed), and is dressed in a simple gown of forest green, embroidered across the bodice in deep blue. It’s Kíli’s favourite, and she knows this.

She’s kneeling in front of a camellia bush, gently touching the flower petals, caressing the plant as if it were a child. In her left hand, she holds a spray of daisies and snowdrops. At that moment, there is a loud bang and rattle, and the entire mountain vibrates. Kíli is shaken from his perch, and in a puff of papers and bitten off swearwords, he goes sliding down the rock face and land with a crash on a tussock of grass. The dossier drifts down after him.

Tauriel sees Kíli go tumbling off the mountain side and stands immediately, jogging towards him with lightness suggestive of her floating. She kneels down beside him, and he stirs, swearing, at attempts to sit up.

“What _was_ that?” he says, looking around.

“I don’t know – are you alright, my love?” Tauriel asks, and Kíli looks over her. She’s touching his shoulder with the hand still clutching the bouquet, and the corners of her eyes are crinkled with a slight concern.

“Of course,” he says, “I’m a dwarf, remember. I’m not as fiddly as you elves!”

“We are not _fiddly_ ,” Tauriel says, pretending to be affronted.

“Oh, alright then, just spindly,” Kíli says, and he laughs as Tauriel swats at his shoulder with the bouquet.

“Stop hitting me with your flowers,” Kíli says, sitting up straighter and crossing his legs, moving slightly to the side so that he can face Tauriel properly – who sits down facing him in a pose mimicking his.

“Here, can I have those?” Kíli says, pointing at the flowers, and Tauriel gives them to him with a smile. Laying them out on the grass beside him, he then begins to braid a strand of hair that has fallen down erroneously to frame her face. He plaits the daisies into it, and as he works Tauriel is again amazed, despite having known him for many years now, that his thick dwarvish fingers can be so deft at braiding.

She tells him this and he laughs, before cupping her cheeks with his hands and kissing her.

“Oi! Kíli!” Someone yells, and they break apart with a squelch.

“What?” Kíli yells, turning around and looking over his shoulder. Fíli is standing there, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised.

“Aren’t you supposed to be reading important political documents?”

“Possibly, but that doesn’t mean I _am_.”

“Fíli,” Tauriel interjects, leaning sideways so that she can see him around Kíli’s broad shoulders, “do you know what that earth shake was earlier?”

“Well, actually,” Fíli says, shifting uncomfortably, “I was coming to ask you the same question.”

“As crown prince, isn’t it your job to know everything?” Kíli says, and Fíli retaliates: “As the crown prince’s younger brother, isn’t it your job to kiss my ass?”

“Kiss it? More like _kick it_!” Kíli yells, and then he’s up and running after his brother. Tauriel stands, arms folded, watching the brothers play fight with a smirk on her face.

“You have the mental age of children seeing their sixth summer, the pair of you,” she says to them both once Fíli had dusted himself down, and Kíli had stopped crowing.

“Ah, the sixth summer,” says Kíli, throwing an arm around his brothers shoulder, guffawing as Fíli tries to throw him off, “I have a few stories I can tell about _that_ one!”

“Funny that,” says Fíli to Tauriel, arms folded and moustache braids swinging, “seeing as he couldn’t talk at the time.”

Tauriel laughs, and Kíli flushes, shoving Fíli away from him.

“Late bloomer, were you?” she asks wryly. Kíli, with both of them laughing at him, sees no way of saving face.

“I just didn’t see the point of talking to people,” he admits, leaning back against the mountain face and running a hand through his hair, “not when I could communicate perfectly well by stomping my foot and pointing imperiously.”

“And biting!” Fíli says, “Don’t forget the biting!”

“Ah yes,” says Tauriel with a sly smirk on her face, “let’s not forget the biting.”

She looks very pointedly at Kíli, and Fíli is suddenly aware that the conversation is veering into a direction that he’d really rather not be around to hear.

“Uh,” he says, “I’ll just...go ask Dwalin what that earth shake was shall I?”

They both ignore him. Kíli has his eyebrows raised, and Tauriel is biting her lip. Fíli makes a quick escape.

“Oh good,” Kíli says when he’s gone, relaxing his face and crossing his eyes, “I thought he’d never leave!”

“ _Dwarves_!” Tauriel says with a shake of her head (one of the daisies comes loose) and a dignified eye roll, making to turn away, but Kíli lunges forward, encircling her wrist.

“I never got to finish your hair,” he says to her as she turns and, suddenly bashful, tucks a flyaway wisp of hair behind her ear.

“No,” she says, “you didn’t – although, I think you and your brother squashed the rest of them.” She nods toward a small smile of crumpled foliage and Kíli grimaces.

“I suppose,” he says with a sigh, “I shall have to pick you some more then.”

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Tauriel says, raising an eyebrow and surveying him in that _way_ only she is capable of, the way that he’s fairly sure is imbibed with some sort of magical ability to make her cheekbones stand out even more than usual, “when one of the Sons of Durin dared to acknowledge nature.”

“Ah, better write down the date,” Kíli says with a wink and a broad smile, and Tauriel snickers at him as he makes a show of wandering sideways to pick an errant daisy. He presents it to her with a dramatic bow, and she plucks it from his hand.

He stands still whilst she passes behind him, gently tucking the stem of the flower into one of his braids, giving his head a small pat when she’s done.

Of course, Kíli must better himself. He walks past her, reaching up to the mountain, digging his fingers into the rock and heaving himself upwards. His feet are sure in his footholds, and he reaches the crevice with ease. Wedging his knee in, he reaches up. Silently, he hopes there’s not another earth shake. Nothing could possibly be so undignified than falling at this angle. Gently, he plucks the small white mountain flower from where it grows, and climbs back down.

Tauriel looks suitably impressed when he lands back on the ground. He starts a new braid for this one (Tauriel has obligingly knelt down for him), pulling in multiple strands of hair around to the back of her head. At the top of the braid he tucks the flower, deftly braiding the rest of the hair all the way down. By the time he’s reached the bottom, he’s quite a few steps away from her.

“It’s done,” he says to her, setting down the delicate braid and bending down to wrap his arms around her delicate shoulders, resting his cheek on her head (careful to avoid crushing the flower).

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” she says warmly, reaching up to hold on to his hands.

He twists them, spreading his fingers apart and tucking them around, and Tauriel revels in the feeling of his strange rough hands against hers. It’s been years now, and she still finds it odd how _different_ dwarves are, even though she knows this one like the back of her hand by now.

“I love you,” she says, and she feels him smile.

“I love you too,” he says to her, and she tips her head all the way back in order to kiss him.

After a moment she breaks away and exhales in a laugh.

“I can see up your nose,” she says, and he rolls his eyes.

“And you accuse _me_ of being immature,” he says with a grin, and kisses her again.

After a few moments of this, Fíli reappears.

“Kíli!” he yells, and Kíli starts upright.

“ _What_?” he snaps, and Fíli rolls his eyes.

“Oh, don’t mind me; I just thought you’d like to know why exactly it is that you _fell_ off the mountain earlier.”

“I didn’t fall,” Kíli says, “I...was... er, coerced by the earth into making a rapid descent.”

Fíli and Tauriel laugh good and long at that, with Fíli eventually having to hang on to one knee to try and catch his breath.

“Well at any rate, one of the disused mines collapsed inwards – the drilling in the North-east mine must have destabilised it. No one hurt,” he assures them when he’s recovered, and Tauriel and Kíli both nod.

“Good,” Tauriel says, “I thought...for an irrational moment...”

Fíli sobers quickly, nodding a little.

“We all did,” he says, and there is a moment of silence. Then Fíli catches sight of the dossier, still scattered all over the place and folds his arms.

“Kíli!” he reprimands, and his brother just shrugs and smiles sheepishly.

**Author's Note:**

> I realised (after I posted) that likely there wouldn't be all that may flowers in the first week of spring. Call it artistic liberty.


End file.
